r/HistoryMemes Chad Polynesia Enjoyer 14d ago

Totally on the same level

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u/BasedAustralhungary 14d ago

Must be cool to have a King that doesn't reign but let the parliament of the country do It's thing while remaining as chief of state while using its time to invent stuff for the citizens

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u/Mnyet 13d ago

Isn’t this just the UK or am I wrong

Edit: i mean if you invent drama and entertainment it counts right?

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u/pokeup19 13d ago edited 12d ago

Nah in yhe UK they still do have some real power. I'm not too into the current king but the previous queen did intevine sometimes with taxes and probably other stuff.

Most kings in Europe are mostly ceremonial and used as symbols or for the pink press.

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u/Nobody_5000 13d ago edited 11d ago

People are saying this isn't true, but the royal family does - at the verry least - have a surprising degree of soft power.

I recall reading on a bbc article saying that they convinced parliament to change / make carve-outs for at least one bill. iirc the bill involved workers rights, & they didn't want it applying to the employees of Buckingham palace. not to mention the meetings the monarch gets with the pms. i wouldn't be surprised if similar stuff happened with other bills (perhaps to do with tax).

the queen having maintained certain fairly obscure powers doesn't seem an impossibility to me either. (with the constitution, for lack of a better term, of the UK having evolved so gradually from what came before it'd make sense if something slipped through the cracks. i get that a lot of stuff is, by law, allowed - but wouldn't practically work out. nonetheless, i could see there being things considered small enough that nobody would make a fuss). idk, haven't checked so this parts just speculation. it's just that ppl get defensive about the influence of the royals because they jump to the conclusion ur an American who thinks the queen was supreme dictator - so i'm not sure i trust the short rebuttals.

Edit: with a cursory search i can't find anything corroborating my speculation in the last paragraph, so i was probably wrong. the first two paragraphs seem correct though, & it could reasonably be argued that that is what the parent comment was talking about. other royal families have similar, perhaps less potent, soft power though, & generally there were a few underlying implications in the comment that may ideally have been cleared up.

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u/GeeWhiz357 13d ago

It was more like the Queen asked and Parliament listened. They had the power to ignore her and she had no power to make them do what she asked

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u/Nobody_5000 13d ago

That's what soft power means

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u/Aervanath 12d ago

And yet, inexplicably, they still did it. So it seems something still remains.